


couleur

by orphan_account



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: College Student France, F/M, M/M, Oh God The PROSE, Older Man/Younger Man, Paris (City), Post-Divorce, Power Dynamics, Salaryman England, Wish Fulfillment, Workplace, prose
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-10
Updated: 2018-08-09
Packaged: 2019-06-24 16:41:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15634638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Arthur is newly-divorced father of one. While embroiled in what may be the ugliest custody battle the world has ever seen, he chooses his job over his family and flies nearly four thousand to Paris, France. In between meetings and consulting inquiries, he falls deeper and deeper in love with a strange boy with an affinity for color.





	couleur

He’s wearing red when Arthur first sees him. Not many people pay color symbolism any mind, and before that point neither had he, but it  _ is _ a color and he convinces him that colors mean more than they seem, and a lot more than Arthur can ever see them to be on his own. Red is for passion. Red is for determination. Red is for pretty college boys with pretty smiles and pretty blonde hair. He stops him in a  _ confiserie _ . It’s a small shop, quaint, welcoming, and possessive of certain homey air that was hard to place a name to. It specializes in confections of all kinds, but there’s a handful of other wares adorning their walls; partially, he thinks, to appeal to tourists. Arthur is searching for a suitable souvenir for a seven year-old boy: something memorable but cheap and disposable enough to be broken. His fingers graze over a snow globe with the Eiffel Tower swimming proudly in a jelly-like substance. Underneath, it reads  _ J’adore Paris!  _ It’s cute.

“You have such a strong profile. Has anyone ever told you that?”  Arthur swivels around on his heels and comes face-to-face with someone who should be his height, but gains an inch from his shoes. His sweater is red, his fingernails are red, and cinched around his waist is an expensive red belt.  It’s all red, red, red. There’s so much of it that it’s almost dizzying. The boy smiles wide and Arthur halfway expects red teeth, but they’re a dazzling white. Evidently, Arthur has never heard that before and he informs him of the fact in the sort of gauche manner that one does when unexpectedly accosted in an empty aisle. 

“A pity. I’d love to paint your portrait.” He reaches clear across Arthur to snatch a soft caramel of the shelves. He pops it into his mouth and tosses it around for a moment, brave enough to stare Arthur down the entire time. He doesn’t bother to pay for it, and it’s enough to make Arthur grit his teeth. He moves the caramel underneath his tongue for safekeeping and continues.

“How long are you staying in Paris?” Arthur gives an indeterminable shake of his head. He doesn’t want to be rude (that is the last thing that he would want to do), but the human person is capable of only so much unheralded conversation before completely shutting down. He figures he has a few minutes left of on his social battery.

“Have we met?” 

“Not before today. You’re here on vacation?” Arthur blinks twice before he comes up with something half intelligent to say.

“For work, temporarily.” He stumbles over himself in heavily-accented French. A ten-week preparatory course, as intensive as it was, did not make a francophone out of him. He pronounces a silent ‘s’.

“You’re foreign. From America?” He, thankfully, switches to English and Arthur can feel his tongue unraveling itself from the contortion it must eternally hold to speak the hell-language that is French. 

“How could you guess?” Arthur mutter and the boy chuckles. The sound is tinkling and bright, and if it is not for the ghost of a beard that’s growing on his chin, Arthur might have mistaken him for a teenager. He runs a finger over Arthur’s smart (if frumpy) brown sweater, a subtle frown drawing itself across playfully pink lips. It’s a dependable thing —  shuts out the cold like nothing else he had ever owned. Though Arthur’s heard that France is a temperate country, he can just barely suppress his doubt. It’s September, the cold is setting in, and the eternally wet season of his home has made him cynical. 

“Your clothes are a dead giveaway.”

“Ah.” Were all French youth so shamelessly cheeky? Unabashedly rude? Arthur angles his body away from him and pretends to be wholly consumed in fascination by the sparkly little bits in the snow globe. He shakes it and waits patiently for the boy to recognize that Arthur is ignoring him and move away. He stays. 

“Are you buying that for yourself?”

“For a friend,” Arthur lies. He snatches it from his hands, and Arthur wishes that he did it roughly so he had something to hate him for. 

“It’s tacky.”

“Is it?” Arthur is monotone. If he notices Arthur’s disinterest, he chooses not to acknowledge it. He only makes himself more comfortable, leaning casually against the shelves of colorful merchandise as he talks to him. 

“Yes. I’ll help you pick out a new one.”

“I think I’ll be fine.”

“I don’t think you will. Have you been able to see the city yet? I’ll give you a tour.” It could have almost been a tempting offer. It’s his first time in what was arguably the most beautiful city in the world, and he’d spend most of it shut up in his hotel or sitting in on meetings. But with a guy like him? Arthur must stop himself from physically shaking his head.

“I’ll take a guided tour.”

“A guided tour? You can’t be serious.” Arthur shabbily attempts to hide his affront. 

“I’m very serious.”

“You don’t want to see the hidden spots that Paris has to offer? The more something is seen,” he gestures vaguely around the room, pulling ideas and thoughts and colors out of the air, “it loses its magnificence, don’t you think?”

“No, I don’t think.”

“Well, you’re American. I didn’t expect you to understand.” Arthur huffs, annoyed, and shoves the snow globe into his shopping basket and makes a beeline for checkout. The boy follows him the entire way.

“My name is Francis, by the way. I’m told it’s a beautiful name.”

“Leave me alone.”

“I’m trying hard to be nice.”

“We’re strangers. I don’t know you.”

‘That could change!” The poor clerk is glancing between the both of them. They make an odd duo, one frumpy thirty-something businessman and an art student who couldn’t have been older than twenty. Arthur points to the snow globe and utters out a weak “ _ c’est combien? _ ” She offers her hand and Arthur hands her the globe. She passes it between her fingers over and over and prattles something off in rapid, fluent French that he can’t understand. Arthur stares at her, focusing all of his brain power on translating the parts he did catch into English. Before he can remember how to conjugate irregular verbs in the “vous” form, Francis steps in, answering for him. He catches some phrases like “tourist” and “you know how it is.” The clerk disappears into a backroom and returns with a box filled to the brim with expensive-looking chocolates. Just the wrapping itself was ornate, all of them painted in gold and accented in other bright greens, blues, and purples. Reds. She takes out three, scans them, and before Arthur can ask Francis what in the hell he thought he was doing, he fishes out a wad of red notes and pays for them.

“These are good for presents. Everyone likes chocolate.” Arthur is too confused to be angry.

“It’ll be gone in two minutes. It’s not memorable at all.”

“You’re very naive for a grown man. I think you could stand to learn a lot from me.” Francis unwraps one of the chocolates and pushes it into Arthur’s hands. He glances down at it, and debates on whether he should throw it back before taking a tentative bite. It’s amazing. It’s far from sweet, but not horribly bitter, and it melts on the tongue like cotton candy. It’s like nothing he has ever tried before.

‘It’s good.”

“Not good, incredible,” Francis corrects. He fishes a pen out from his back pocket and scribbles his phone number across Arthur’s receipt. He writes the number “2” all loopy and pretty-like, and Arthur finds it weirdly fitting. He doesn’t have to look to guess the color of the ink. 

“What’s this for?”

“For when you change your mind.” Francis smiles and slips away into the crowd of commuting men and women before Arthur can say goodbye. He forces himself to believe he hadn’t wanted to anyway.

There are a million calls that need to be made before tomorrow, and Arthur has barely settled into his hotel room. His employer isn’t known for his generosity, but he is gracious enough to purchase him a room with a nice bed, a bathroom furnished with high-pressure shower heads, and most importantly, a sizable free-standing bathtub. Arthur sighs in relief. He’s heard horror stories about French showers without sliding doors, equipped only with a lousy half-wall that takes every chance to let water escape and flood the floor. It’s by virtue of this that he will indulge himself tonight. Arthur runs a bath for himself, turning the water as hot as he can bear it and sprinkling in lavender bubble bath soaps. He strips, downs a glass of room-service bourbon, and soaks until his fingers prune and he nearly forgets about all the worrying conferences he’ll have to sit in on in the coming weeks. The silence lasts only for a few minutes before his phone rings and any semblance of a peaceful night in dissipates. He picks it up.

“Hey, kiddo.”

“Hey, Dad.”

“What time is it over there?” Arthur asks. There’s some rustling on the other end of the  line that Arthur attributes to Alfred tossing around in bed. Even from across the Pacific Ocean, he could envision him, swaddled in his superhero-themed sheets and cuddling a toy soldier to his chest. He still sleeps with a pink night light that shines from the far corner in his room, bright enough to banish the shadow monsters that lurk in the night, but not disturb his sleep. 

“Two. I’m not tired, though. I couldn’t sleep.”

“Why’s that?”

“I miss you.” Arthur sighs and pours himself another drink, thankful that his remarkably impressionable son cannot see him drowning all of stress in a bottle. It isn’t the healthiest thing in the world, but he's never claimed to be Jillian Michaels.

“I miss you, too.”

“How’s France? Have you tried a baguette?”

“We have those at home, too.” Alfred heaves a sigh that erupts into a fit of half-restrained giggles. His mother knocks on the door and tells him to go to sleep, cutting the party short momentarily. When he’s sure that she’s gone, he puts the phone back up to his ear and whispers back his response.

“I meant a real one. A real French baguette.”

“Yeah, I’ve had one or two.”

“What’d it taste like? Will you bring one back for me?” Arthur lets himself slump down into the bath until only his head sticks up above water. He closes his eyes and lets the water lap at his neck. It’s lukewarm now.

“It’ll be a long while before I see you again.”

“I know. I can be patient, though,” Alfred smiles lightly and the sole dimple on his right cheek shows through, “I can wait.”

“Good, good. How’s school?” 

“Hard, but you already knew that. Mr. Abrams wants to start me on evening schools. So I can learn better.” Alfred doesn’t attempt to hide the disappointment in his voice, and Arthur can’t blame him. With English, there were thousands of correct answers. If he can think up a way to support his claims, he can be sure there will be a shiny gold star on whatever paper he hands in. Math is too convoluted, too involved. There are formulas to memorize and theories to prove and one hard and fast result that is often too difficult for Alfred to wrap his mind around. He stares at his workbook for hours at end, stares until the numbers turn to mush on the pages, but it’s no dice. 

“How do you feel about that?”

“Okay, I guess. I don’t really have a choice, since Mom already set it up.” Arthur figures that he should have expected that. Mom is always “setting things up”, making judgements on what should be joint decisions, and purposely keeping him out of the loop. Custody is a tricky thing, and there are shades of gray muddled in everywhere, even the places that are supposed to be black and white. 

“Do you want me to talk to her?”

“No. No, don’t start fighting again,” Alfred urges, fingers finding their nervous purchase on the blanket tucked under his chin.  

“We just… get heated sometimes. We won’t fight.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.” Arthur yanks the plug out of the tub and watches the water twist into a vortex and funnel into the drain. He steps out, careful not to slip on the wet tile, and wraps a fluffy robe (courtesy of hotel room service) around his shoulders. Arthur pauses to glance at his reflection in the mirror. The bit of color that he earned a few months back in Florida is rapidly fading, leaving behind snow-pale skin and a smattering of tan freckles on his nose. It’s a foreign, intrusive thought: the fact that he might not see Alfred again until the snow falls in thick, plush blankets over their home. He’d be even paler by then.

“You’ll visit for Thanksgiving, right?”

“If I can. There’s a lot factors that can change things.” Alfred sighs for the second time that night, and Arthur knows he’s a horrible excuse for a father and that he’s barely present in his own son’s life, but he shoves the thought to the back of his mind. He knows better than anyone the kind of things that can happen if he lets his brain linger on reality for too long. He stands in front of the window, overlooking the city below. People look like ants, scrambling about, running errands, living life. For a split second, Arthur thinks about the “hidden spots”, the ones he’d never be able to see on a guided tour. He suppresses that idea, too. 

“So, no Thanksgiving. Okay. That’s fine, but definitely Christmas, right?”

“Definitely Christmas.” Alfred presses his ear against the cool drywall on the north end of his room, right behind the bed’s headboard. The walls in their house were thin, and from the other side who could hear the soft snores of his mother in the next room over. Alfred has school tomorrow and she has work, but phone calls that Arthur answered are few and far in between. He barely manages to stifle his yawn. Arthur laughs.

“Go to sleep, Freddie.”

“I’m not tired. Honest.”

“You just yawned.”

“Will you call again tomorrow? After school?” Alfred whispers and his voice barely carries across the line. 

“If I say yes, will you shut your eyes?” There is a moment of careful deliberation on Alfred’s part.

“Yeah.”

“Then, yes. Goodnight, bud.”

“Goodnight.”

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading y'all...  
> i've only just started liking fruk so i decided to write something on it   
> yes the ending is kind of abrupt please dont come for me  
> ALSO i know freddie sounds weird but you cannot call a seven year old alfred its actually illegal


End file.
